Why Reading To A Child Is SO IMPORTANT!

This week in class, we are discussing wishes. All kinds of wishes, some of which may or may not be discussed without the children present. To wit:

• I wish Brad Pitt would walk in here right now and whisk me away*.
• I wish we could have celebrated Veteran's Day on Friday, thus giving us a longer holiday break.
• I wish Panera delivered.
• I wish the kids would stop trying to kill each other and call it "playing".

The kids, however, have other ideas. See below:

• I wish we could have McDonald's EVERY DAY for lunch!!
• I wish we had a waterslide at school!
• I wish we had a Transformers Center!!
• I wish we had a Princess Palace!!!
• I wish Optimus Prime would come to our school!

So because we are discussing wishes, I have been reading a book called Ten Wishing Stars. The kids LOVE it, and ask me to read it as one of the books I read each day. (I read at least 4 short books each day to the kids. They seem to like my mad reading skills.) Today was no exception. So I read it, and we had a great time.

The Scholastic Book Fair just so happens to be at our school right now, and one of our students brought money in to spend at the book fair. One of the other Teaching Assistants in our class took him down to the library to check out the goods. The rest of us stayed behind for Centers.

They returned a short time later, and he ran up to me with a big smile. He gave me a hug and said "Miss S, look what I got!!!" From behind his little back, he brought out this:
Can I just say how chuffed I am? He totally made my day!!! He could have ended up with ANY OTHER book, but instead, he bought the one I had just read to him a short while ago. How awesome is THAT?

Wicked awesome, I think.

*For the record, this was not my wish. This one belongs to someone else, okay honey?